Tigers Trip to Top of League

Preview: Men's and Women's Lacrosse

Scoreboard

Tigers Trip to Top of League
Men's basketball takes Ivy lead with four wins in two weekend road trips

Thursday night: bus ride. Friday night: game, late-night bus ride. Saturday night: game, late-night bus ride. Arrive back in Princeton early Sunday morning. Such is the rhythm of Ivy League road trips. For the men's basketball team (16-5 overall, 8-1 Ivy), the whole month of February is usually a road trip-and for a first-place team that hopes to win an Ivy championship, a successful road trip means getting two victories.
When Penn and Princeton are locked in a battle for the Ivy championship, as they are in 1996, such a road trip takes on an added dimension, because the two teams are "traveling partners." Princeton's Friday-night road opponent is Penn's Saturday-night foe, and vice versa. As traveling partners, the teams are linked in the minds of opponents and to each other. For the other teams in the league, nothing is more important than the weekend Penn and Princeton come to town.
For the Princeton team on a Friday night, nothing is more important than the Penn score. After all, it is Penn that one is battling for the title, and one is also concerned with how tomorrow night's opponent is faring against the Quakers. Of course, it is hoary cliché that one not admit to scoreboard watching during a game, but within minutes of game's end, Tiger players and coaches alike are wandering outside the locker room. "Any Penn score yet?" they ask. "I heard Penn was down three at halftime-anything later?"
On two successive weekends, February 9-10 and 16-17, Penn and Princeton traveled to New England. And with a 4-0 record on the trip, Princeton climbed past its traveling partner and into first place in the Ivies for the first time since the 1991-92 season.
The trip began at Harvard, in a game that was touted as Harvard basketball's coming-out party. After a disastrous 6-20 season a year ago, the Crimson had jumped off to a 4-2 record in the Ivies (12-6 overall) going into the Princeton game. In the week before the game, the Boston Globe reminded readers that if Harvard could beat Princeton and Penn at home, it would control its own destiny for the rest of the season. Outside of the renamed Lavietes Pavilion (nee Briggs Athletic Center), students were scalping tickets. Inside, other student entrepreneurs ran up and down the aisles, hawking Harvard basketball T-shirts.
Once the game started, it looked like Harvard's resurgence was for real. Princeton's offense, which can struggle at the best of times, was anemic; six minutes into the game, Princeton had just two points. Tiger coach Pete Carril normally would have begun to make his "fireman" round of substitutions, to change the tempo of the game, but forward Gabe Lewullis '99 was sick and unavailable, which meant Carril's whole substitution pattern was disrupted. (The previous Saturday against Cornell, Lewullis had almost single-handedly kept Princeton alive by scoring 17 points, helping the Tigers to recover from an early 16-point deficit.)
But Carril's other fireman, guard Mitch Henderson '98, was healthy and available. So the coach replaced forward Chris Doyal '96 with Henderson and shifted captain Sydney Johnson '97 to forward. Carril had a small lineup on the floor-with the exception of center Steve Goodrich '98, no Tiger player was over 6'4" tall. But each time that Henderson is playing, it changes the tenor of the game. Says Goodrich, "When Mitch comes in the game, he makes the whole offense run better. We have confidence on the floor, because we know that he just kills guys one-on-one." With the shorter 35-second shot clock, Henderson's quickness and driving ability also make a difference. More often than not, with the shot clock winding down, Princeton puts the ball in Henderson's hands and lets him create the offense. "It's not by design," Henderson says, "but it seems that the ball ends up in my hands in those situations. I just take it to the hole and it seems to work."
Against Harvard, the small lineup worked. By halftime, the Tigers had taken a 20-16 lead, and with a good start to the second half, they seemed to be in control. But while Princeton had a comfortable lead, it was not an insurmountable one. And with nothing to lose, Harvard began to press all over the floor, to create turnovers and to cut into the Tigers' lead. And in so doing, the Crimson whipped the capacity crowd into a frenzy. It was left to Johnson to ice the game with 1:30 left-he shot a three-pointer from the left corner that crept over the rim just as the 35-second shot clock was running out. Princeton won, xx-xx.
As soon as the game was over, the scoreboard-watching began. In an age of faxes and pagers, Ivy League scores are still reported the old-fashioned way-to get the Dartmouth-Penn score, someone had to call the phone that was installed at the scorer's table in Hanover. And so the scores crept in: Penn by five in the first half; Penn by three with 12 minutes left. Penn by four with two minutes left. Then, stunningly, word came in that it was Dartmouth over Penn, 54-53.
Penn's loss was a watershed-for the first time in four years, the Quakers had lost to an Ivy opponent. The win also left the league with three teams-Princeton, Penn, and Dartmouth-tied for first place, with one loss each. (For the record, Dartmouth had played-and won-one more game than the other two). Despite the Tigers' near collapse against Harvard, it was a loose and confident Princeton team that arrived in Hanover late on Friday night; after all, they were in first place.
While Princeton's team defense is a usual key in its victories (as it has done for the past seven years, Princeton leads all Division I schools in that category), at Dartmouth the story was the defense of one individual: Sydney Johnson. The Tigers' defense has evolved over the years from a matchup 3-2 zone to a straight man-to-man, which meant Johnson would play Dartmouth's Sea Lonergan, an all-Ivy selection last year as just a sophomore. Lonergan was averaging over 18 points a game and is the leading weapon in the Big Green's attack. Johnson held Lonergan to just six points. Johnson just didn't prevent Lonergan from scoring-he kept Lonergan from touching the ball. While Lonergan had been averaging more than 18 shots a game, Johnson held him to only eight (Lonergan made three), a feat that made Lonergan admit, "Sydney had me in lockdown all night." Says Johnson, "I am just trying to be a pest out there, bumping a guy every chance I get. So then, even when he gets an open shot, he won't want to take it." Nor did Johnson contribute only at the defensive end. He led the Tigers with 15 points and played all 40 minutes.
But unlike the previous night, against Harvard, when the Tigers had merely to withstand a late rally, against Dartmouth, the game was in doubt all the way. With Dartmouth trying to recapture the intensity it had the night before (when the Big Green ended Penn's 48-game Ivy winning streak), Princeton kept only a small lead. Goodrich, who is "the best inside player in the league," according to Henderson, matched Dartmouth's seven-foot center Brian Gilpin, getting 14 points, eight rebounds, and seven assists to Gilpin's 17 points, five rebounds, and one assist.
With a two-point lead, just 3:50 on the clock, and a capacity crowd screaming for blood, Chris Doyal who found Henderson in almost the same spot on the floor where Johnson had been standing the night before. And like Johnson, Henderson drained the three-pointer to ice a xx-xx win and keep Princeton in a tie with Penn (which recovered from the loss at Dartmouth by beating Harvard) for first place.
If Carril was happy with his team's first weekend in New England, he didn't readily admit it. "This is a memorable weekend, because Harvard and Dartmouth are among the elite teams in the league this year," he said. "But when we get back to practice on Monday, it will be ancient history."
After a week of practice, night Princeton went back on the road the next Friday, to face Brown in Providence. That game was eerily reminiscent of the previous Friday's contest with Harvard, for Princeton again held on to win in the face of a strong comeback. And the defensive story was again Johnson, who this time held his man, Eric Blackiston (another first-team all-Ivy last year), scoreless. Meanwhile, Brown's strategy was to double-team center Goodrich every time he touched the ball, forcing him to pass the ball back outside. But with a very balanced scoring attack (Johnson led with 12 points; forward Jamie Mastaglio '98 had 11, Doyal and guard Brian Earl '99 had nine each, and Henderson had eight), Princeton withstood a Brown barrage (which included a missed layup in the last second) to win, 58-56.
After the game, Tiger players and coaches again asked for scores from other games around the league. And though Princeton had been pleasantly surprised a week earlier at the news that Penn had lost to Dartmouth, on this Friday the news was more shocking, and more pleasant-both Penn and Dartmouth had lost. The bus ride to New Haven for Saturday night's game against Yale would be a new experience for this crop of Tiger players: Princeton had sole possession of first place in the Ivy League.
After three straight nail-biters on the road, the team responded to its new status with a show of force against Yale. Three weeks earlier, the Tigers had barely beaten Yale at Jadwin, and Yale had knocked off Penn the previous night. When the Bulldogs jumped to an 8-4 lead, it looked as though the Tigers might succumb to the same fate as the Quakers did the night before.
But then the clock struck midnight for Yale. Three three-pointers by Johnson ignited a 23-6 run from which Yale never recovered. By midway through the second half, Johnson and the other Tigers started to let themselves to enjoy the moment. Lewullis, who had been sick the previous weekend and who did not play against Brown, returned to play nine minutes. By the end of the game, Carril felt comfortable enough to empty his bench for the first time on the road trip. The final was 64-42.
After this game, the team wasn't as concerned about out-of-town scores. "We're getting closer and closer to wrapping this race up," said Johnson. "Losing to Penn on the opening night of the Ivy season woke us up and since then we have been playing with a sense of urgency. But I still expect it to come down to that last game in the Palestra." (Princeton will end its regular season in Philadelphia with a March 5 game against the Quakers.)
Questions still remain for the Tigers. Freshman Brian Earl, who still leads the Tigers in scoring, has struggled a bit in league play. According to Goodrich, that's because "the word is out on Brian around the league and he's no longer getting the open shots that he was in December. Plus, he's getting knocked around and held a lot." Earl broke out with 12 points in 36 minutes against Yale and must continue to improve. But after the Yale game, even Carril seemed to be satisfied with the road trip. "For the second Sunday in a row, I am going to be able to enjoy myself, without worrying about what went wrong." And in classic Carril-speak, he summarized the four road games that moved the Tigers into first place and kept them there: "When you go home from where you have been, and you are in the same place as when you started, that's pretty good."
-Matt Henshon '91
Since making his last road trip with the Tigers, former forward Matt Henshon '91 has gone to law school and now works in Boston.

Preview: Men's and Women's Lacrosse
If fans of princeton men's lacrosse considered 1995 less than successful, their disappointment only bears testament to the high standard that coach Bill Tierney has set in his tenure. The Tigers compiled a 15-4 record and made the quarterfinal round of the playoffs (losing 15-11 to Syracuse, the eventual national champions). The coach divides his schedule into three mini-seasons: Princeton's early nonconference games, the Ivy season, and the NCAA playoffs. Last year, a pessimistic fan could argue the Tigers fell short in each one. But if Princeton showed it wasn't invincible, those shortcomings also indicate what it must change in order to make the Final Four in 1996.
Tierney calls part one of the Tigers' schedule "an instant slap in the face." For the last several years, the team has faced a slate of the nation's elite lacrosse programs, among them Johns Hopkins, the University of Virginia, and the University of North Carolina. Princeton, ranked third in a preseason poll by Face-Off magazine, played at number-two Johns Hopkins (its traditional first opponent) on March 2. This Saturday, the Tigers will face number-four Virginia in Charlottesville, then head to Norfolk, where they'll meet number-eight North Carolina a week later. The team will open its home season against Rutgers (ranked 20th) in its inaugural game at the Class of 1952 Stadium on March 23. Last year, Princeton was 3-2 in its first mini-season, but was trounced, 11-4, by Virginia at home on March 11. That performance proved the team was feeling the loss of its eight outstanding players from the class of 1994. On defense, the team was struggling to find a replacement for its field general and star goalie, Scott Bacigalupo. The team's four goals showed how its offense could struggle without Kevin Lowe.
This year, Tierney won't start the season worrying about how to fill the "huge" shoes of Bacigalupo. He has four goalies: cocaptain Pancho Gutstein '96, Patrick Cairns '97 (who played most of last season), Neal DiBello '98, and Corey Popham '99. "We could go all the way with any of them," says Tierney. The rest of the defense may still be an open question, however. Princeton will leave its only experienced player, Rob Neff '96, at longstick midfielder, meaning it will start the season with defenders in front of the goal who are nearly untested (though they played well in the fall Infiniti tournament and in preseason scrimmages).
But if Tierney's offense performs to his expectations, the coach may not worry too much about a few defensive mistakes. Because as Princeton moves to part two of its season, facing Ivy League opponents, the coach will ask his Tigers to do something unusual--score frequently. Princeton will try to overwhelm archrival Brown (ranked eighth in the national poll), which it will play in Providence on April 6, and will target a Cornell team (ranked 16th) when it comes to Princeton on April 20. Last year, a 9-8 loss to the Big Red was "devastating," says Tierney. "It cost us the outright Ivy title [which Princeton shared with Brown] and the opportunity to be ranked in the top four of the NCAA tournament."
Returning from last year are Ivy League Rookie of the Year Jesse Hubbard '98, Jon Hess '98, and Chris Massey '98, who combined for 84 points last season. They are joined by Todd Eichelberger '97 and freshman standout Lorne Smith. "We're loaded on offense," says Tierney. Despite his potent attack, if Princeton gets ahead of its Ivy opponents quickly, it's likely they will see more of the patient offense Tierney has favored in the past. "If you run and shoot," says the coach, "you have to play more defense."

If Princeton wins the Ivy title, it may get the top-four seeding in the NCAA tournament --the team's "third season"--that it missed last year. In 1995, the Tigers ended up sixth and had to face Massachusetts in an opening-round game, then travel to Syracuse, where the Orangemen's powerful offense (and home-field advantage) were more than Princeton could handle. Since number-one-ranked Syracuse is the only top-five team the Tigers won't see in the regular season, last year's defeat may have taught them what it will take to win if the teams should meet again. But success in Princeton's first and second seasons could delay such a meeting until the Final Four May 25-27 in College Park, and that's right where the team would love to be.

Women's Lacrosse
The women, who followed their 1994 NCAA title with a second-place finish last year, also have their sights on a Final Four berth. According to coach Chris Sailer, a misstep could keep it from them. "When only six teams make the tournament, every game is so vital, and there aren't many teams who can recover from losses to make it. We must be in top form from the first couple of games on."
Fortunately, Princeton has a fast, experienced, and deep roster that features all-America midfielder Lisa Rebane '96 and all-America attacker Abigail Gutstein '96. Together, their ability to score will make the Tigers a team to beat. If attacker Cristi Samaras (last year's Ivy Rookie of the Year) and standout midfielder Casey Coleman '97 continue to excel, Princeton will have a formidable and balanced attack, exactly what Sailer thinks she'll need to win. All-America goalie Erin O'Neill '96 will lead a defense that suffered the loss of two starters and of midfielder Amory Rowe '96. Veteran defenders J. J. Lonsiger '96 and Carter Marsh '97 must excel this season for the Tigers' defense to hold up against a host of powerful opponents.
Princeton's first three home games--against James Madison on March 10, Virginia on March 17, and league rival Dartmouth (which beat the Tigers, 10-9, last year to win the Ivy title) on March 30--will be crucial. "How we open is tough," says Sailer. "The way we perform in those games will set the tone for the whole season." On the road, the team will be challenged in games at Temple (April 3) and Penn State (April 20).
No matter what happens, Maryland's arrival in Princeton on May 1 looms large. The Terrapins lost only one starter from last year's team (which beat Princeton 13-5 in the championship game) and are nearly certain to defend their title in the 1996 Final Four. "Beating Maryland is going to be a tall order," says Sailer. "Probably everybody out there sees them as the team to beat." If the Tigers do win, no team has a better chance to play for the national championship on May 19.
--Paul Hagar '91

Scoreboard
Men's Basketball
(16-5 overall; 8-1 Ivy)
Princeton 49, Harvard 44
Princeton 52,
Dartmouth 41
Princeton 58, Brown 56
Princeton 64, Yale 42

Women's Basketball
(15-8 overall; 5-4 Ivy)
Harvard 81, Princeton 56
Dartmouth 70,
Princeton 62
Princeton 64, Brown 50
Yale 53, Princeton 52

Women's Ice Hockey
(9-15 overall; 3-6 Ivy;
7-7 ECAC)
Princeton 6, Yale 1
Providence 6, Princeton 0
Brown 5, Princeton 2
New Hampshire 9,
Princeton 3
Princeton 9, Colby 4
Cornell 8, Princeton 3
Princeton 5, St. Lawrence 3
Men's Ice Hockey
(5-16-4 overall;
3-12-3 ECAC)
Princeton 4, Colgate 3
Princeton 1, Brown 1
Clarkson 4, Princeton 1
Princeton 4, St. Lawrence 3

Men's Squash
(9-1 overall; 5-1 Ivy)
Princeton 9, Williams 0
Princeton 9, Dartmouth 0
Harvard 6, Princeton 3
Princeton 6, Penn 3
Princeton 9, Yale 0

Women's Squash
(6-2 overall; 3-2 Ivy)
Princeton 9, Amherst 0
Princeton 9, Williams 0
Princeton 9, Dartmouth 0
Harvard 6, Princeton 3
Princeton 7, Pennsylvania 2
Princeton 8, Yale 1